


FxxSTxNSCRxPS

by UnderThisRedRock



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Amity Blight Needs a Hug, And the kinds of behaviors that stem from abusive parents, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-22 14:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30040311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderThisRedRock/pseuds/UnderThisRedRock
Summary: Amity needs to be perfect. If she is perfect, she is loved. If she is less than perfect, she has failed. Her standards are not unreasonable. She is not under pressure.The pressure is not too much.
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Comments: 11
Kudos: 106





	1. Cross

**Author's Note:**

> be careful if abuse upsets you
> 
> even though it becomes okay in the end
> 
> but does anything ever really end
> 
> or does time keep rolling forward
> 
> has anyone ever ridden off into the sunset

Ninety-seven.

Amity stares at the circled number in the top corner of the page. Ninety-seven. The sounds of the classroom, papers rustling, students comparing, she doesn’t hear them. They’re distant. They may as well be happening off the Boiling Isles.

Maybe it’s a mistake. She turns the page, scans her answers, finds only checkmarks. Second page, nothing but checkmarks and correct formulae in her tidy script. She turns the page again.

A cross.

In the middle of the third page, a cross.

She reads question twenty-six, the one with the cross branded next to it. It’s about acid-rich earth. Earth-based abominations are not practical, but they show up in the theory because it’s an easy way to pose problems that deal with the acidity as a factor and little else. She reads her answer, her eyes darting back and forth between the values she’s calculated for and those given in the problem. They match. Her formula is cleanly resolved at the end.

But still.

A cross.

_It’s a mistake._

Amity re-reads question twenty-six, isolating each word. It’s about untilled soil with a high acid content. If an abomination of standard ratio to the caster is desired, how much--

_Wait._

She looks at her formula again, and an uncomfortable tingling prickle worms its way up her neck. Amity has adjusted her calculations for the presence of air, as is the default for soil because the default for soil is assumed to be aerated. She reads question twenty-six, the shameful prickle creeping across her scalp.

Untilled. Not aerated.

She’s answered the wrong question. It’s wrong. Her answer is wrong.

Amity closes the test and folds it over for good measure. She doesn’t need to see that mocking number in the red circle again. Ninety-seven. It’s imperfect. Something missing, an obvious flaw. Like a jagged crack on a smooth surface. One that might leave a finger bloodied.

_I’m wrong._

She focuses on the surface of her station, smooth but imperfect. She can see the floor beyond it, far away and out of focus. If a jagged crack were to open up in it to swallow her, Amity might welcome it. The cold prickle spreads down her shoulders, up her arms. She wants to tap her fingers on the smooth imperfect surface but she won’t allow herself to.

Somewhere far away and out of focus, there is screaming.

In her mind’s eye she sees a finger sliding across a smooth surface and encountering a flaw, an error, a mistake, a crack with wicked jagged edges like demon teeth. She sees the finger reach the razor edges and come away bloodied.

The bell. The bell is screaming. Class is over. The day is over.

There’s sounds of students talking, students getting up from their chairs, students leaving. Amity doesn’t move. She wonders briefly what would happen if she didn’t move. Never moved. Just stayed at her station, looking at its smooth surface but not seeing it, seeing instead the bloodied finger.

Somewhere far away and out of focus, someone is saying her name.

Amity turns her head, her neck stiff. It’s Luz and her wide shining eyes.

“Amity?” she repeats. “How did you do?”

She sees in her mind’s eye what would happen if she handed Luz her marked test. She’d unfold it and her eyes would go even wider somehow and she’d congratulate Amity and Amity would feel like a fraud. She’d feel imperfect. She’d feel _wrong_.

“Amity?” A frown is beginning to grow on Luz’s face.

Amity stands and pushes past her and leaves the classroom in silence, her skin prickling. She leaves the school.

She doesn’t go in the direction of home.

-/-

It’s only when her boot crunches through the first drift of snow that Amity realizes she hasn’t been registering the outside world at all. The sun is setting, streaking long shadows across the ground. The air is cold.

It’s always cold at the Knee.

She takes a second step into the white expanse of snow, and another, and another. Soon her boots are sinking through layers of undisturbed frost. She’s not dressed for a trek up the mountain, but that doesn’t matter. It’s cold but she doesn’t feel cold.

She feels numb.

The slope of the mountain turns steep and Amity stumbles, her knee sinking into the cold snow. The sound is loud in the silence. For a moment she considers getting to her feet and continuing upward, observing the shadows in the crack in the many levels of snow her boot has scraped away. Her knee is cold, her uniform providing little protection. It’s distant information.

Amity takes a deep breath. It comes out of her mouth with a plume of condensation.

She pushes back the sleeves of her uniform. The air of the Knee is cold on her arms.

Another deep breath.

Then Amity sinks her hands into the snowdrift.

The snow is deep. Both arms go in up to the elbow without resistance. She’s doubled over on the side of her mountain, her face almost up against the snow. When she breathes, it makes the flecks on the surface glitter in the setting sunlight.

Her hands clench around packed snow. They’re cold, but that’s distant information. Amity tightens the muscles in her arms, locking them in place. Unnecessary movement causes unnecessary pain. If she doesn’t move, it only--

_It only hurts as much as it needs to._

If she doesn’t move, it doesn’t hurt as much.

Her breath collects on the surface of the snow in tiny droplets. She focuses on the pinprick of sunlight caught in a liquid bead. She wants to pull her arms back. _Weak._ The cold burns against her skin. _Don’t fail this too._

She screws her eyes shut and tenses her shoulders. Her breath is a feline hiss. She’s not going to move her arms. Her hands are burning in the snow, but she’s not going to move them. They can stay beneath the snow until the sun goes down. Until the stars come out in darkness. They can stay there forever and burn. It’s what they deserve.

 _I deserve this._ Amity presses her knuckles against the hard-packed snow and an unformed sound escapes from the back of her throat. _I deserve this._

The snow squeaks with movement. It’s a ridiculous sound. She tries to remain as still as she can but Amity still hears the crunch and the squeak of snow being disturbed. She’s crouched motionless like a stone gargoyle and still there’s the sound of snow. A crunch. Another.

Another behind her.

Amity pulls her arms away and turns, a million needles prickling at her skin in the cold air. She doesn’t feel them. She turns and sees Luz climbing up the Knee behind her, her eyes wide and staring.

A cold weight drops in her stomach like lead. Her breath freezes in her throat. She’s been _seen_. She’s been _discovered_. She’s been _caught_.

Amity does the only thing she can think of. She runs.

-/-

She runs like a scurrying rat, like a hunted rabbit, like a dumb animal. Amity runs through a copse of frozen trees where the snow is lighter on the ground, thinking only _run_ and _hide_ and _get away_. Her foot snags on a root and she goes sprawling, spraying snow in the air as she falls. Her arms are in dull screaming agony.

She scrambles around the trunk of a tree and plants her back against it, sitting concealed in its shadow. Hunkering. Cowering. She tries to calm her ragged breathing. Her arms shake. She draws her knees up to her chin, trying to be as small and insignificant as possible, and realizes she’s still gripping fistfuls of compact snow. Prying her fingers open makes her wince.

Why had she come here? Why did she do this? Amity drops her head against her knees, her red stinging hands clutching her legs.

_Why can’t I do anything right?_

The sound of Luz’s footfalls in the snow is getting closer. Luz can just follow her tracks in the otherwise unbroken snow, Amity realizes. She can track her like an animal. A stupid animal. Luz is going to find her and start asking her questions and Amity won’t have any answers. Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you?

Why are you so stupid?

The snow shifts by Amity’s feet. She raises her head to look right into Luz’s eyes. She’s right next to her, kneeling in the snow. Her face is in the long shadow of the tree but Amity can see her expression perfectly. She doesn’t look surprised and shocked, or angry, or sad with concern. Looking like that might have been enough to make Amity run again.

Luz looks determined, and that’s what keeps Amity frozen in place.

She gingerly reaches out and touches the sleeve of Amity’s uniform, still rolled back past her elbows. Luz tugs it back into place and then repeats on her other arm. Amity watches her in silence. “You’ll get cold,” she murmurs.

 _Too late for that_ , Amity thinks, her inner voice bitter.

Luz’s fingers brush over hers, and Amity hears her gasp. “Amity, your _hands_ \--”

She looks away. A prickling cold burn spreads across her skin that has nothing to do with the snow.

She’s going to leave. Amity is sure of it. Leave and leave her. Luz’s warm hand against her frozen one only convinces her that any second Luz is going to come to her senses and leave. She doesn’t deserve other people, their concern and their pity. Not when she’s so stupid.

“Amity,” Luz says. It isn’t a question.

She looks up, once again into Luz’s bright eyes.

Her whole face is bright. She’s made a light, drawn the glyph in the snow, and is holding it between them. Amity can feel it radiating warmth against her legs, her face, her frozen hands.

Luz guides the orb with her free hand. “Take it,” she says, nudging it towards Amity’s clasped hands.

Amity remains motionless, uncomprehending. The orb of light quietly hums, providing light as the sun sets.

“It’s okay,” she tells Amity, her voice soft and warm.

She takes hold of both of Amity’s hands and raises them to cup the orb, the miniature substitute sun. It’s warm and pleasant and almost makes her forget the howling pain in her fingers from moments ago. It’s so unlike the sterile light any novice witchling could make, tinged candlelight yellow and warm like holding a mug of cocoa. It’s unique, just like its caster. 

Luz’s hands envelop hers. They’re almost as warm as the ball of light.

“It’s okay.” She’s not talking about touching the orb.

Amity’s breath hitches and her vision blurs. She closes her eyes tight and knows there’s no stopping it. As the first tear rolls down her cheek she pulls her hands away to once again clutch her legs close against her. A brief wild thought tells her that this too will ruin things, but she feels Luz’s arms around her in an all-encompassing hug and the thought falls quiet. She sobs into her knees, braced against the tree and braced against Luz.

Her crying sounds like nothing she’s ever heard before. Tears should be silent. Tears should be solitary. Tears should be secret. Yet the wracking banshee sounds coming out of her are anything but, and still Luz holds her and repeats the same words over and over like a refrain.

“It’s okay, Amity. You’re okay.”

She feels terrible.

But at the same time, she does feel okay.

-/-

Her tears don’t last forever, although it feels like they could have. When Amity opens her eyes, the sky has darkened. The long streaks of shadow have disappeared. The orb of light bobs above them, caught in the branches of the tree.

Her eyes are wet. She wants to dry them with her sleeve, but Amity knows she won’t be able to reach. Luz is still attached to her with a crushing embrace.

She can deal with wet eyes for a little longer.

Luz is first to break the silence. “We should go,” she says. Amity can feel her breath against her cheek as she speaks. “It’s gonna get dark.”

Amity nods, her chin rubbing against her knees. Luz releases her and stands up. She offers her hand to Amity, and when she takes it she helps pull her to her feet.

She also doesn’t let go once Amity is standing.

Wordlessly, hand in hand, they descend the Knee together.

-/-

“You’re going to have to talk eventually,” Luz says.

Amity knows. It scares her.

They’re both sitting on the floor in Luz’s room on the sprawl of blankets and cushions and who-knows-what that also happens to be soft. Amity once again has her knees drawn up to her chin. Luz is sitting cross-legged and observing her. They’ve been permitted to sequester themselves away from the Owl Lady and a bubbling cauldron of what may end up being food, Amity with a brief shake of her head and Luz with a curt response of _later_ , but Amity doesn’t totally trust it. Adults didn’t trust things like closed doors and incommunicative children.

“You might feel better, if you do.”

Luz scoots closer and rests a hand on Amity’s knee. She leans her head down to meet Amity’s gaze.

“I’ll listen,” she says. Amity feels her hand squeeze, warm and reassuring.

Where to start? _How_ to start? If she starts to talk, Amity might never stop. It feels like there’s so much that she’d suddenly burden Luz with, and so much of it is--

_So much of it is about Luz._

And there’s so much of it she doesn’t want to talk about yet. If she starts, it might all come out at once. It might be like crying, beneath the tree.

_The crying stopped._

Amity takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. “I missed a question on the test,” she says at last.

“That’s okay. That’s alright.” Luz smiles. “A bunch of those questions were really hard! More than a bunch. And it was only one, right? It can’t be that bad. Maybe you could find some extra-credit stuff to submit, or…”

Her voice fades. Amity watches her face fall. It must be her unchanging expression that’s robbing Luz of her natural optimism.

“...It’s not really about missing a question, is it?”

“Not really,” Amity mumbles into her knees.

“Is it about what your parents might say?”

Amity sucks in a sharp breath. She stops not focusing on anything and letting her eyes blur. She _stares_ at Luz. She’s right. Not all the way right, but… right enough. It could have been a lucky guess, a very lucky guess, or--

_It must be very obvious._

She looks away, back at a blurry nowhere point in the middle of the room. “They wouldn’t notice,” Amity says, her voice bitter. “They don’t care.”

Luz is quiet and uncharacteristically still. The world hasn’t been thrown off its axis with Amity giving voice to a half-form thought that has been lurking in her mind. The ground hasn’t cracked open to consume her. She hasn’t spontaneously burst into flames.

And Luz isn’t refuting her, so she continues.

“They care about Ed and Em. They’re perfect. Even when they’re not, they’re still perfect. They can’t do anything wrong. They’re a perfect matched set, and I’m…”

She buries her face against her tightly-held legs, hiding.

“...I’m just the leftover. The spare.” Her voice has shrunk to a whisper. “They only notice if I’m less than perfect.”

Luz says her name. Amity looks into her puppy-dog eyes. She looks like she might cry. Amity feels a momentary burst of disgust with herself, for being manipulative and exaggerating the situation and--

_It is pretty sad._

“Can I give you a hug?” Luz asks.

Amity sucks her lips between her teeth. Suddenly it’s her who is on the verge of crying. “Okay,” she says, blinking, her voice measured.

She expects Luz to attach to her from her position beside her like she did in the snow, but that’s not what happens. She shifts behind Amity and presses her full weight against her back. Amity stiffens a little when Luz wraps her arms around her. That was unexpected.

But not entirely unpleasant.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” Luz tells her, her voice soft and murmuring almost right into Amity’s ear. “You don’t have to be perfect for anyone to love you. You just have to be you, Amity, and if someone doesn’t love that, that’s their loss.”

Amity feels Luz shifting position behind her, feels her hair brush against her skin. It feels like she’s laying against her, laying her head in the crook of her neck. She can barely move, but she wouldn’t want to move. Everything is warm and safe right now.

“There’d be something wrong with them, and not you,” Luz continues. Amity can feel her words as she speaks. “If they didn’t love you.”

Amity hears the words. Then she hears them again, hears two meanings in them. Her stomach twists. A response forms and she stops herself from almost saying it out loud. What was she about to say? Right to Luz? Was she--

_Do you think she doesn’t already know?_

Amity swallows. She feels the words she wants to say, their shape, their weight, their texture, but they remain stuck in her throat. “Thanks, Luz,” she says instead.

_Coward._

“Hey,” Luz says after a long silence. She climbs around so Amity can see her face. “Do you want to stay here tonight? If your--” She pauses to correct herself. “If that’s okay with you.”

Amity looks at her and her smile, inches away. She’s not up to slinking in the front door at home and hoping to go unnoticed. She’s barely up to spending another night in her alcove at the library. What she really wants to do is just lie down where she is and sleep.

Just then her stomach makes a mortifying noise. It’s late, and she hasn’t eaten.

Luz smirks, and then her warm smile returns. “I bet Eda’s made enough food for all of us.”

-/-

They descend the stairs together and are confronted by Eda wearing a singed apron. “You kids want in on this?” she asks from the kitchen, indicating at a bubbling cauldron full of chunky liquid. “Otherwise whatever’s left is just going in the garbage disposal.”

“I thought you fed leftovers to Hooty,” Luz remarks as she takes a place at the table. Amity sits beside her.

“Like I said.” Eda scoops up and distributes three mismatched bowls. Amity notes that she’s surprisingly dextrous with the stumps at the ends of her arms, her hands left behind to stir the pot.

“Smells good,” Luz says. She’s right. The smell is rich and thick and reminds Amity of walking trails in the deep woods. It’s nothing like the dinners she’s used to at home, which are measured and refined. Her mother would call this peasant food, with disdain. “What’s in it?”

“Same thing as always.” Eda hefts the cauldron, her hands reattached, and brings it to the table. “Don’t ask,” she says, and Luz copies her words and tone.

Amity takes a tentative bite of something that may have been meat, or vegetable, or fungus. It tastes like it smells, earthy and warm. She swallows the spoonful, and another, and another, suddenly aware of how ravenous she’s become.

“So,” Eda says, “you two working on a project for school or something?”

“Or something,” Luz says with a chipper smile, and doesn’t elaborate. “Hey, can Amity stay the night?”

“Knock yourself out,” Eda says, shrugging. “Don’t summon anything in the house and don’t drink all the milk. You don’t snore, do you?”

“I, uh.” Amity pauses mid-mouthful. She’s unprepared to be included in the conversation.

“Doesn’t matter, I probably won’t hear it anyway. I sleep like the dead these days.” The Owl Lady snorts laughter, and Amity can tell it isn’t directed at her.

Amity is happy to fall into the background of the conversation as Luz and Eda settle into a well-worn groove. She listens with rapt attention as the miscellaneous stew spreads its warmth through her. She can’t say they behave like mother and daughter, because she’s never spoken with her mother like they do. She can’t say they behave like sisters, because she’s never spoken with her sister like they do. They feel like family, but not. It feels alien, but comfortable at the same time.

She eats her food, and observes.

-/-

Amity pushes the sleeve past her wrist. The second she moves her arm it falls back down. The sports jersey is enormous, hanging off her like a tent. The sport it comes from, to hear Luz describe it, sounds almost as violent as grudgby, which Amity wouldn’t have thought possible without magic. She wonders just how much body armor a player would need to be wearing for the sailcloth she’s using as makeshift pyjamas to make sense.

As she folds the unwilling sleeve over, doubling it past her elbow, she notices Luz watching her with a curious expression, and is suddenly aware they are alone again. They’ve been mostly alone through finding bedding in Eda’s endless repository of human artifacts, and through preparing for sleep, but now they are completely alone. The door to Luz’s room is closed, they are both sitting on the floor in the unceremonious pile of blankets and pillows, and Luz is looking at her with her curious eyes.

Amity wants to sink into the titanic jersey but fears it won’t be enough to mask the growing redness in her cheeks.

“What?” she asks at last, turning away to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

Luz blinks. “Hm?” She’s oblivious.

“You’re… staring at me.” Amity takes great care in folding back her other sleeve.

“Oh! Sorry.” Luz focuses on the paper sitting in front of her, completing the unfinished glyph. The glowing bubble of light that rises from the floor floats to join the dozen others that bob at the ceiling and luminate the room. “You look different with your hair down, is all.”

“Good different, or bad different?” Amity folds her knees beneath the hem of the jersey. If she tried, she might be able to get it to cover both of her legs. It really is like a tent.

“Just different.”

They lapse into heavy silence. Amity’s eyes dart around the room, searching for some subject to fill it. She wants to start talking about school. About home. About her hair. About anything that would break the silence.

Instead, she lays down and pulls a blanket up to her chin. It feels like hiding. Like defeat.

“Tired?” Luz asks as she too lays down, shifting her pillow so she’s level with Amity on the floor.

“Not really.” Why does she have to be so _close_? Amity’s never going to fall asleep.

“Me either.”

For a long moment Amity watches Luz watch her. For that moment, all she can see are her big brown eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Luz asks.

At first Amity doesn’t understand the question. Then she does, and the afternoon comes rushing back to her. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” she mutters, burrowing down into her blanket as much as she’s able.

“Okay,” Luz says. Her tone is neutral. She rolls onto her back and looks up at the glowing orbs. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.” Amity’s eyes rest on a point in front of her. It happens to be Luz’s rounded ear.

“Before I came here, in the human world, I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have any friends at all, actually. And I was pretty lonely, and pretty sad. So, my mom had me see a therapist.”

The word means nothing to Amity. Sometimes she can puzzle through Luz’s arcane turns of phrase through context, but now is not one of those times.

“She kept making it clear that she wasn’t like a _therapist_ therapist, that she was just a councillor or something. I guess that’s important? I don’t think there’s much difference, but it probably is important when you’re a--”

“What’s a therapist?”

Luz glances at Amity, not moving her head. “Oh. Right. Hm. Do you remember me telling you what my mom does, how she’s a nurse?”

“She works with healing magic,” Amity says, “without the magic.”

Luz smiles. “Yeah. But that’s just for a person’s body. If you want to heal a person’s mind, that’s what a therapist is for.”

“How does that work?” Amity asks with some trepidation. Luz has hinted a little at what she understands non-magical healing to be. It seems invasive and vulgar, full of operations that cut away at healthy tissue to reach a disease and potions that cause more problems than they cure. Magic that deals with a person’s mind is highly controlled if not outright illegal; she can’t imagine humans being cautious with something so delicate.

So it naturally comes as a surprise to Amity when Luz tells her: “Mostly, you just talk.”

“Just talk? What, about anything?”

“Well, kind of. To start, maybe. But you get to talking about your feelings and your thoughts, and the other person gives you some perspective on them. How to see them a little differently, or use them in a positive way. Something like that.”

“And…” The simplicity of the concept is difficult for Amity to fully grasp. “And that works?”

“Yeah. For lots of people.”

“For you?”

“For me.” Luz is still looking at the ceiling, at her lights.

Amity shifts a little beneath her blanket, unsure of what to say. Just talk? What would she possibly just talk about? Maybe this was something that only worked for humans. Maybe she was just too flawed for it to work properly on her. What were her problems anyway? Missing questions on tests because she was too stupid to not read the question properly. Being the mistake in a family that didn’t tolerate mistakes. How does just talking solve any of that?

_I could tell Luz how I feel._

Despite the warm blanket and thick jersey, Amity feels the cold spike of fear run through her. She can tell Luz how she feels. And then Luz will know how she feels. And then Luz will know how she thinks. How flawed and worthless and imperfect she is. How much she lies. How undeserving she is of all of Luz’s kindness.

“Could…” she begins.

Luz turns to look at her with her kind eyes. The only sound is the faint hum of the orbs.

“...Could we get some sleep?” Amity says at last. “I’m tired.”

_Coward._

Luz smiles at her. “Sure,” she says, and releases the magic in her lights, and the room goes dark.

Just before she does, Amity thinks she might have looked a little sad.

-/-

She wakes when the sun is still creeping above the sea. For a moment, Amity doesn’t remember where she is. Then she does.

And she becomes aware of an arm wrapped around her.

Some time in the night Luz has shifted and pressed herself up against Amity’s back. She’s still beneath the blanket but Amity can feel her warmth, her presence there. There’s also Luz’s arm curled around her, resting around her midsection, securing her in place. Amity can hear the soft rise and fall of her breathing.

Her pulse doesn’t quicken. Her breath doesn’t seize in her throat. Her mind doesn’t go blank. Amity closes her eyes. She’s comfortable. For this moment, everything is warm and safe.

 _I could tell Luz how I feel_ , she thinks, and this time it seems a little less impossible.


	2. Cut

The morning ends. Their time together ends. Luz has a series of deliveries to make all over Bonesborough, nondescript packages covered in nondescript wrappings that seem faintly unsavory when gathered in a nondescript satchel. Amity has her children to read to at the library. They part at a crossroads, Luz hugging Amity and Amity hugging her back. Luz takes the path into town, and Amity faces the path that leads home. Their time together has ended. She’s back in the real world.

It’s a walk to reach Blight Manor, but before she knows it Amity is standing at the gate at the base of the hill. Nobody is there to greet her. She opens one of the tall entrance doors, disappearing in its shadow, and nobody is inside either. The whole grand house is still, the air heavy and undisturbed and filled by the steady sound of ticking clocks.

Amity retreats to her room. Showers. Changes. Leaves as soon as she can. Closes the austere door behind her. Never looks back.

-/-

When she reads about Otabin searching for a friend, she’s reminded of Luz. When she turns on the string of twinkling lights in her hidden alcove, she’s reminded of Luz. When she catches a glance at her copies of Good Witch Azura on the bookshelf, she’s reminded of Luz.

Now, gripping her pen, biting her lip, staring at Luz’s name on the otherwise blank piece of paper, Amity can’t think of what she wants the note to say. It had all seemed so easy before it was time to write the note, but now it is time to write the note and it seems impossible. None of the words sound good in her head. She doesn’t want to see any of them written out on the page. In her mind’s eye she sees another piece of paper with Luz’s name on it, torn in half by a shapeless apparition with wide mocking eyes.

Amity makes a circle with her finger and the paper crumbles to ash. A note is a stupid idea. She rests her head on her hands and sighs. The sigh becomes a groan. Why does this have to be so difficult?

_What’s to say she would even say yes?_

No. Amity isn’t going to doubt herself on this. She just needs a little bit of courage to--

_\--Just friends--_

She _isn’t_ going to doubt herself on this.

For a long moment all Amity can hear is her breathing. It fills the tiny hidden space. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Something is making her palm hurt. Her hand has been balled into a fist and the nails are pressing against her skin. Slowly, she unclenches her fingers. There’s ash from the burnt note pressed into the lines of her palm.

She smears the ash with her thumb. One of her nails has a large chip in the polish. She studies both her hands. Upon further inspection, all the nails could do with a touch-up.

Amity leaves her secret room. She leaves the pad of paper behind. She leaves the library with the sun setting behind her.

-/-

The light in the kitchen is white and uniform. Amity doesn’t care for it much. It’s tolerable when reduced to a tiny white pinprick, the reflection of one of the heavy lamps in her fresh nails. It’s like a little orb trapped at the tip of her finger.

Painting her nails has become a solitary ritual. It’s an activity that requires quiet and calm and doing it makes her quiet and calm. Her hands can’t shake. The whole world is shrunk down to the brush and the one nail. Nothing exists outside the walls of her quiet and calm bedroom, and she can give complete focus to each nail, one by one, a new tiny quiet world. There’s no room for thoughts of what might be happening in other places, in other times. Just her, the brush, the nail.

Then comes waiting for her nails to dry. She can’t do anything while they dry, and she likes that. She can’t read, can’t write, can’t study, can’t check her scroll. Just sit with her hands stretched out, resting on her thighs, and examine the new smooth black topography of each nail. Sometimes she waits for far longer than is needed, gently tilting her fingers back and forth and watching the reflected light swim just under the surface of the polish.

Sometimes she’s too early and she leaves a clear fingerprint on the pristine surface when she tests if the polish is dry, but that’s not a problem; that only means she needs to apply another coat, smooth out the imperfections with another layer of uniform black. Then she gets to wait for the nail to dry again. It’s not a task that can be failed. It’s pleasing to both apply the polish and wait for it to dry. It’s impossible to fail. She likes that, too.

The wait for her cocoa to warm on the stove is considerably less interesting, so instead she studies the light in her nails.

And that’s when Mother walks in.

For a moment Amity is sure she’s about to hear some comment on her drink. Mother drinks tea and only tea, and only in the sitting room and only in the afternoon in the company of her friends. Mother has made it expressly clear to the twins that, since they are so insistent in displaying how _adult_ they are in drinking coffee and using up all the sugar, the least they can remember to do, as _adults_ , is to bring their empty mugs out of their rooms and not leave them there to attract gremlins. Amity isn’t sure where cocoa sits in the great divide between tea and coffee. It certainly doesn’t feel very _adult_ to her.

“Did you hear about all that commotion at the Emperor’s castle?” she says instead. Her tone is identical to the one she uses with her circle of tea-drinking friends. “Some business with that owl woman who lives in the woods.”

“I saw it on the news,” Amity says. She’s non-committal. Neutral. Like the still surface of her cocoa. Why can’t it hurry up and boil?

“It seems,” Mother continues, barely registering that Amity has responded, “she has an apprentice. A human, of all things. Isn’t that funny?”

She picks an apple from the fruit bowl and a sharp knife to cut it. The knife makes a dominating crunch as it bites into the apple’s flesh, blood leaking onto the counter.

“Fascinating, the kinds of tricks you can teach them. I would never have imagined.” She cuts a narrow slice from one of the apple halves, carefully avoiding the pale white seeds. “Although,” she says, and bites into the red flesh, “it is a little grotesque, isn’t it?”

Mother laughs into the back of her hand. There’s a fleck of apple blood in the corner of her mouth. Amity glances away at her cocoa. The surface is starting to waver.

“Teaching a human magic! It would be like if we dressed up one of your little abominations and made it serve meals. Just imagine!”

“Right.” Amity manages a weak smile. Her cocoa is as warm as it’s going to get. She snatches it off the stove. “Grotesque.”

She has to turn away from Mother to transfer the cocoa into a mug. The pouring liquid is almost enough to mask the sound of another bite of the dripping apple. Almost.

“Oh, Amity dear?” Again, the tea-time tone. “You don’t happen to have a great mountain of schoolwork that needs to be completed tomorrow, do you?”

“No,” she says. Her mug is full. The door is only a few steps away, the stairs only a few steps beyond that.

“Not meeting your tutor? No other pressing extra-curricular activities happening?”

“No, Mother.”

“Wonderful!” Mother beams. It’s as white and uniform as the kitchen lights. “Then you have time to fix your hair, that dastardly brown is beginning to show again.”

A cold prickling tingle radiates across Amity’s skin. “Yes, Mother,” she says, and leaves the kitchen before anything more can be said.

-/-

Amity is back at the Knee. She is at the peak of the Knee and the sun is setting. The snow is uniform and white. She sees through her eyes and sees herself at a distance at the same time.

She’s with Luz but she’s not with Luz. The thing that looks like Luz has mocking accusatory Gromethean eyes. Amity looks at it and looks at herself looking at it and feels the stinging cold.

The thing that is not Luz speaks with a voice that comes from everywhere.

_Have you ever seen your own reflection in a dream?_

Amity watches the thing that is not Luz lead Amity to an endless wall. The wall is ice and the ice is a mirror. She sees herself seeing herself in the endless reflection and feels the icicle stab of fear and revulsion spread through her. Her skin is purple. Her skin is formless clay.

In the endless reflection, she holds a red apple. Her palm drips with blood.

 _Grotesque_ , the thing that is not Luz whispers from everywhere and nowhere, _grotesque_.

Amity wakes with a start. For a moment, she doesn’t remember where she is. Then she does, and sighs in the dark.

-/-

She looks at her reflection in the dull clinical light of her bathroom. Amity Blight looks back at her.

The light makes the green in her hair look unnatural. Sickly. Like the leaves of a dying plant. She examines the bottle of dye in her hand. Under the light, the green dye is both murky and iridescent, like dragon scales.

She anticipates the prickling itch that worms across her skin when she applies the dye, an itch that makes her want to jump and scratch but one she’s powerless to stop. In her mind’s eye she sees Mother’s beaming smile, white and uniform.

She drums her nails on the hard bottle of dye. How long has it been since she started painting them? And has Mother even noticed them? The twins did, right away. _Very tough, Mittens_ , they had said. _Very spooky_. Boscha had said something about Amity being able to do that now since she wouldn’t get her nails all jacked up playing grudgby any more. Even Father had noticed. _Huh_ , he had said one breakfast, _didn’t know kids were still doing that_.

But Mother had never noticed. Mother has never mentioned them.

Amity tilts the bottle back and forth, watching the slick mottled liquid churn.

_But she notices the brown every time._

What’s wrong with brown? For so long she’s thought of brown as the color of dirt and mud and clay. That it was base and faintly unclean. That it was _common_. That was Mother’s word: _common_. The lowest of all epithets. _Common_. Unspecial. Unremarkable.

Unloveable.

What’s wrong with brown? Brown is the color of aged wood, hot cocoa, old pipes packed with fresh tobacco. It’s the color of comfortable armchairs to sink into and the blankets that cover them. It’s the color of coffee mixed with milk. It’s the color of libraries.

_It’s the color of her eyes._

Brown is the earth, a burrow to hide in and be safe. Brown is the soil for planting seeds in and watching them grow. Brown is warm and soft and strong.

Amity looks at the bathroom in the reflection. The room is slate and marble and cold. Nothing brown about it. That would be too _common_.

The bottle of dye is the green of olives and of the scales of sleeping dragons. The green of poison. Looking at it makes her scalp prickle.

What’s wrong with brown?

She ignores the bottle. Instead, she picks up the scissors.

-/-

Amity emerges from her room in the morning and springs down the stairs. She expects confrontation. She expects conflagration. She expects shouting and fireworks and revelations.

When Mother sees her, and sees her hair -- her short, ragged, _brown_ hair -- a frozen quiet falls over the breakfast table. She stares, her face locked.

She stands.

She leaves in silence.

Father sighs, and asks, “Amity, why must you antagonize your mother like this?” He follows her. To Amity it looks like retreat.

 _Coward_ , she thinks.

The twins are in shock. Edric’s jaw is on the floor. “Mittens,” Emira breathes, “what in the ninth circle did you do to your hair?”

“I fixed it,” she says, and shrugs.

“That’s not the verb I would have used,” Edric mutters.

Emira elbows him. “We’ve got some time before school starts,” she says. “You want some help evening it out a little bit, or do you wanna keep it all…” She struggles for the right word.

“Punk?” Edric supplies.

Amity runs a hand through her hair, aware of how it’s short enough to stick up, and gives her siblings a sheepish grin.

“It could probably stand to be a little less punk.”

-/-

Amity practically runs to school. It feels like a great weight has been lifted off her. She knows it’s a metaphorical weight but her whole head feels physically lighter too. She can feel the morning breeze on her ears as she walks. She feels light, like she could be carried away with it. She feels light, like a sunbeam.

She spots Luz lingering on the entrance stairs. There might be other students, but they are distant information. They might be giving Amity a second glance. They might be whispering something to their friend standing beside them. They might not have even noticed her. Amity is unaware. Her focus is Luz.

When she lifts her head and sees Amity, sees her and her eyes go wide and an excited smile blooms across her face and she shoots to her feet, Amity thinks: _I can tell her how I feel_.

She feels light.

Luz closes the distance separating them with a couple of steps and reaches her hand up before Amity can register what is happening. She touches the side of Amity’s head, slides her fingers over Amity’s new short hair with her eyes full of wonder. Amity’s breath halts in her throat. Luz’s hand is warm and Amity can feel her face heating to match. Time is meaningless.

“Oh! Sorry.” Luz pulls her hand back like it might suddenly burn. “I should have asked.” Her eager smile never falters.

“It’s okay,” Amity manages to say. When she speaks, she finds she’s smiling too.

“It’s just so… different.” Luz is inspecting her with her wide eyes. It’s almost as intense as when she was physically touching her. “Good different,” she clarifies.

“You think so?” She’s standing so close to Amity. Concentrating is difficult.

“Sure.” Luz grins at her, wide and warm. “Girls with short hair are cute.”

For a moment, Amity is unable to think. She experiences her thoughts grinding to a standstill like worn machinery. Then she remembers, as if it’s a great revelation, that Luz herself has short hair.

_Is that all, though?_

She sees Luz’s warm smile, her shining eyes. It’s just the two of them, together, in their small tiny world. Everything else is very distant.

“Luz, I--”

The bell screams.

The sound of students talking, students walking, students hurrying to their first class, fills the open space of the courtyard. Time begins again.

Luz glances over her shoulder. When she looks back, Amity thinks she looks pained. Or is that just her projecting out what she’s thinking?

“To be continued, okay?” Luz says, and Amity reluctantly agrees.

They walk down the hallway together and part to find their lockers. Amity takes a deep breath as she retrieves her books.

She has no classes with Luz today. That’s probably for the best. Amity heads to her first class with the intention of diligently concentrating.

Concentration, however, is difficult to find. Through the day Amity finds herself touching the side of her head, sliding her fingers over her new short hair, and she smiles. It feels alien, but comfortable at the same time.

-/-

Last class. Last bell. The giddy lightness has transmogrified into a nervous flutter that resides in the pit of Amity’s stomach.

She deposits her books in the maw of her locker, and turns to find Luz has appeared beside her.

“So,” Luz says, leaning against the row of lockers.

“So.” Amity is acutely aware of the hallway being full of other students.

In the following moment of silence between them, one of the lockers nips at Luz's elbow, causing her to yelp and yank her arm away and break her attempt at a cool demeanor. Amity stifles a giggle behind her hand.

Rubbing her elbow, Luz asks, “Were you going to say something? You know, this morning.”

“Can, um.” Amity feels her stomach twist. She runs a hand through her new short hair. “Would it be okay if I stayed at your place again?”

“Sure,” Luz says without hesitation. “ _Mi casa búho es su casa búho_.”

“What?” Amity is not sure if she’s heard correctly.

Luz shakes her head. “Never mind, dumb joke.” She starts down the hallway after eying the locker. “Should we go?”

Amity falls in step beside her. “Oh,” she says, “there’s a thing I need to pick up, too.”

They step out into the afternoon light together. “Lead the way,” Luz says, gesturing to the horizon.


	3. Candle

The library is empty and quiet. Amity glances over her shoulder, then triggers the hidden mechanism to open up her alcove. As she ushers Luz inside, it occurs to her that this is the first time she’s invited someone in.

“I wish I had a cool secret room,” Luz says to nobody in particular. “Hey, what happens if you’re in here and the library closes?”

“I have a key, actually.” Amity leans over the old desk crammed into the corner to find what she’s looking for.

“Wow, no way, how’d you score that?”

“Through many years of building trust with the head librarian.” She straightens up, a bulging canvas bag in her hands. “I don’t know, I’m here a lot.” She shrugs.

“What’s in there?” Luz asks, indicating the bag. “Party supplies? Contraband?” She grins. “Narcotics? I mean, I know Eda is cool with a lot of things, but I don’t know if she’s _that_ \--”

“No, no,” Amity says, cutting her off, “it’s just some stuff. A change of clothes or two. Spare toothbrush. Bedroll. You know, stuff.”

As she speaks, Amity sees the change in Luz’s face. She sees her putting the pieces together. The smile falls from her lips. Amity watches Luz look around the small secret room, look at the bag, at the spread of cushions in the corner, at Amity herself. Her stomach twists.

“Amity,” Luz hesitantly asks, “you don’t... _stay_ here, do you?”

Amity backs against the desk. “No. Sometimes. Not really.” She doesn’t want to look at Luz. “Not often.”

Luz steps right in front of her. She looks at Amity with her deep brown eyes. Her intense eyes.

“Is…?” Amity can’t find the words. She swallows. “...Is that bad?” she asks at last.

“Yeah, it’s bad!” Luz explodes at her. Amity recoils a little, trapped between Luz and the desk. “You don’t feel safe in your own home, that’s bad! Does anyone even know you come here?”

“The twins do,” Amity sputters, “but please, Luz, it’s not that often--”

“You have a go bag ready!” Luz gestures at it with both hands. Her eyes narrow, and somehow she encroaches even more into Amity’s space. “They don’t _hurt_ you, do they?”

“No!”

Amity isn’t sure what she’s refuting, Luz’s hissed question or the entire situation. Her parents don’t hurt her. Don’t deprive her. Don’t punish her. She’s just ignored, until she steps out of line. That’s not the same thing, is it?

_Is it?_

Her parents don’t hurt her. They don’t encourage her. They don’t protect her. They don’t acknowledge her. If it’s something a parent should do, Amity’s parents don’t.

And that _hurts_ , deeper than actual pain could.

“Not…” Amity whispers. Her voice hitches. “Not physically.”

Something changes in Luz’s face. Amity looks away before she gets a good understanding of it. Her vision is starting to blur.

“Oh, Amity, I’m sorry.” She seizes Amity’s hands and holds them close to her chest. “I’m so sorry, I’m not mad at you, okay?”

“Okay,” Amity mumbles.

“I’m mad at them. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Luz rests her forehead against Amity’s own. Amity can’t tell if Luz is trying to catch her gaze or not. She’s fixated on her hands held in Luz’s hands, caught between the two of them.

“I’m sorry for upsetting you,” Luz says.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” She squeezes Amity’s hands. “Any time you want, you can stay with us. No questions asked.”

A faint smile crosses Amity’s lips. “Thanks, Luz.”

She disentangles herself and drops to the floor on one of the cushions in the corner. Luz sits beside her, crossing her legs. Amity leans her head against the bookcase behind her and is reminded of her short hair. Had that been just yesterday, when she had done that? Had that been this morning, when it had given her so much confidence? It feels like a thousand years ago.

“Today started so well,” she says to the ceiling.

“There’s still plenty of today left. Maybe we can make it end well.”

Amity laughs, but it feels hollow in the tiny space.

“Seriously!” Luz shifts to sit on her knees, leaning closer to Amity. “What made this morning good?”

“I don’t know,” Amity says, even though she does. She runs a hand through her short hair. “I guess it was doing something I knew Mother would hate. I don’t _want_ her to be mad at me, but since it was something she didn’t approve of, it made it feel more like it was _mine_ , in a way.”

“Can you think of something else she wouldn’t approve of?” Luz asks, and smirks. “Maybe try doing that.”

Amity looks at Luz, her kind eyes, her eager smile. A long moment passes between them in silence. What to say next comes to her with perfect clarity, like sun through parted clouds. Like a revelation.

“There’s this girl,” Amity says, completely calm, “that I’ve kind of had a crush on, for a little while. And she’s sweet, and funny, and kind, and we like a lot of the same things, and she makes me laugh, and she makes me happy when I’m around her. A little nervous and tongue-tied, maybe, too, but mostly happy.” She takes a deep breath, and adds: “And I know Mother would hate me liking her.”

“She sounds great.” Luz leans closer. Their gaze is unbroken. “What’s wrong with her?”

Amity can see herself reflected in Luz’s big brown eyes, a faint figure lit by the hung lights. _No turning back now_.

She takes a breath.

“She’s a human.”

Amity watches the realization bloom on Luz’s face, the color grow in her cheeks. “Oh,” she says with a bashful smile.

“Yeah,” Amity says, feeling a smile of her own, “oh.”

Luz crosses her arms, uncrosses them, rests her hands on her legs, starts fidgeting her fingers. “I’m something of a local expert on humans, you know,” she says at last.

“Mm, I do know.” Has Amity ever seen her this flustered before?

“So, in my expert opinion, I would have to say, about this girl you like…”

Luz forces her hands to behave by making fists against her thighs.

“...That she probably likes you a lot too. That you’re really pretty and interesting and she’s probably been so excited about getting all these new friends that she hasn’t even really had time to process that maybe she _like_ likes one of them but she’s probably really excited about the whole idea--”

Amity is smiling like she couldn’t stop herself. “Luz.”

Her interruptions are futile. “--Because she sounds like the kind of girl who would be very into a magical romance with a cool witch girl who’s like a _little_ standoffish at first but is actually sweet and sensitive underneath--”

It feels like she could start laughing at any minute. Like either of them could. “Luz,” she says again.

“--And probably all she needs is someone who likes her for who she is to be comfortable in letting that sweet and sensitive part show--”

Amity touches a hand to Luz’s cheek. “Luz!”

“--Probably.”

Luz covers Amity’s hand with her own. It’s warm and soft. Somehow, their faces have drawn closer to each other.

“You know,” Amity says, her voice quiet and still, “if this was a romance, this is probably the point where the characters would kiss.” She can feel her heart racing.

“It probably is.”

She can feel when Luz talks. When she smiles.

Luz leans closer still. “Oh, what am I doing here?” she asks, although it’s completely obvious.

“What are you doing?” Amity brushes her cheek with a thumb. Their noses touch.

“This,” Luz answers. She touches Amity’s new short hair, sliding her fingers through it, resting her warm palm against Amity’s head.

Amity melts into their first kiss.

It takes quite some time for them to leave the library.

-/-

Neither Amity nor Luz hears the door to the Owl House open from their position on the worn couch.

They had arrived to an empty house and, after a couple of moments of hesitant maneuvering, settled there. Luz’s legs lay over Amity’s. Their hands are entwined. Their heads are pressed together, close enough to whisper and be heard with perfect clarity.

The throat-clearing that comes from the doorway causes them to both jump and disentangle themselves as quickly as possible.

“Luz! Luz’s friend!” Hooty announces in the resulting silence. “Eda and King are back, hoot hoot!”

“Thanks, Hooty,” Luz says through her teeth. The blush Amity can see spreading on her face looks almost as bad as the one she feels on her own.

King points a gleeful finger at Luz. “Haha,” he exclaims, “you had a private moment exposed.”

“Didn’t I catch you having a tea party with your stuffed animals last week?” Luz shoots back.

“That was a strategy meeting!” King, presumably to avoid having any more secrets divulged, scampers off to elsewhere in the house.

Eda shuts the door and rests her staff against the coat rack. “As you were, kids,” she says, her demeanor seeming unaffected.

“Wait, that’s it?” Luz asks, voicing the thought Amity has just herself had. She couldn’t have predicted just what the Owl Lady’s reaction would be to finding her and Luz being together, but she can’t believe it’s as mild as it seems.

Eda shrugs. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know!” Luz throws up her hands. “Wig out and get weirdly protective and be all _there’ll be no canoodling under my roof, young lady_ and threaten to give me The Talk.”

Eda raises an eyebrow at her. “Okay, several points.” She checks them off on her fingers. “First, work on your impression of me, I would never say anything as square as canoodling. Second, if I forbid you from sucking each other’s faces here then you’re just gonna go do it out in the woods somewhere, and that’s where the dangerous monsters live. Third…”

Eda pauses and folds her arms. At first, Amity can’t pin down what has changed in her, even though something has. Then she can: _vulnerability_.

She thinks, very clearly, that this is the first time she’s been able to recognize it in an adult.

“...I trust your judgment,” Eda says after a pause. “You’re gonna make good decisions and you don’t need me hovering over you to make sure you get ‘em right.”

Luz runs a hand through her hair. “...Thanks, Eda,” she says with a faint smile.

Eda turns her attention to Amity. “You,” she says, unreadable.

Amity tenses, her hands sitting primly in her lap and making fists. She swallows.

“You’re Odalia’s kid, right?” Eda asks with a pointed finger.

“Yes,” Amity responds, and then adds as an afterthought: “I’m Amity.”

“I know that,” Eda tells her, although Amity is not completely sure she did.

Luz’s hand finds Amity’s and squeezes it. “Can Amity stay here again tonight?” she asks. There’s a softness when Luz speaks. She’s not asking because she doesn’t want Amity to leave, although that is part of it.

_She’s asking because she doesn’t want me to go home._

“Who am I to stop you?” Eda gestures with her hands in a way that reminds Amity of Luz. “You’d probably just sneak her in through the window if I said no.”

“I would not!” Luz exclaims, and Amity can’t tell how serious she’s being.

“Why not? It’s what I would have done when I was your age.”

Eda winks at the two of them and goes to leave, then pauses.

“One last thing.”

Her expression hardens. She levels Luz with a stare.

“Please tell me I don’t actually have to give you The Talk, because that’s gonna take years off my life.”

Luz starts to laugh. Eda joins her. Amity feels a chuckle escape her.

“You can give me The Talk!” Hooty interjects from outside. “What’s The Talk?”

“Shut up, Hooty!” Eda and Luz exclaim in unison.

-/-

“Luz,” Eda says from the stove, “can you go find King?”

Luz stands up from the table. “And tell him there’s food?”

“And to get out of my nest if he’s been sleeping in it. His weird fur gives me a rash.”

She leaves. Amity hears her on the stairs. It’s just her and Eda now in the kitchen.

Eda steps away from the stove and sits in Luz’s spot next to Amity. “So,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate.

“So.” Amity taps a finger on the table. She's reminded of Luz standing by her locker.

“Luz is someone pretty special,” Eda says after a moment.

“She is,” Amity agrees.

“She likes you.”

Unable to stop herself, Amity smiles. “She does.”

“So that means, by extension, I like you.”

The same unguarded expression appears in Eda’s face again.

“Try not to screw that up, alright?”

Amity can’t think of another time when an adult has treated her like this. Teachers have trusted her. Lilith has trusted her. In a way, even her parents have trusted her, but it has never felt quite this way. At all other times, trust has meant an expectation to perform, to behave in a certain way that befitted a model student and a Blight.

But this feels different. Eda trusting her feels different. She could just dismiss Amity, or remain indifferent to her, or forbid her from speaking with Luz. Instead, she’s trusting that Amity won’t hurt Luz’s feelings.

_That’s what feels different._

Her teachers, when they trust Amity will be a model student, risk nothing.

Her mentor, when she trusts Amity will be a diligent apprentice, risks nothing.

Her parents, when they trust Amity will be an obedient daughter, risk nothing.

And yet here is Eda, the Owl Lady, fugitive, pariah, willing to take a risk on someone she barely knows.

It feels alien to Amity. New, and alien, and overwhelming.

But at the same time, comfortable.

“I’ll try not to, Mrs Clawthorne.”

Eda snorts laughter, undercutting any seriousness the moment may have had. “Please,” she says, “Mrs Clawthorne was my grandmother.” She extends her hand to Amity. “I’m just Eda.”

“Okay.” Amity shakes her hand in agreement. “Eda.”

“If Luz asks,” Eda says, “can you pretend like I threatened you? Say I said I’d hunt you across the Boiling Sea if you make Luz sad. She’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Sure,” Amity says, and smiles.

“What are you two talking about?” Luz appears in the doorway, King at her feet.

“Nothing malicious!” Eda says with overt cheerfulness as she returns to the stove.

-/-

The light of sunset makes long shadows creep across the floor of Luz’s room. Amity sits on her unfurled bedroll, chin resting on her knees, waiting for Luz. She can see her borrowed sports jersey in the corner, folded neatly and surrounded by glyph papers. It feels unreal.

Amity glances out the window. From her place on the floor, all she can see is the tips of the tallest trees and the orange sunset clouds. She doesn’t need to see the sun inexorably sinking into the sea outside to know it’s happening.

If the sun never came up again, she thinks, and doesn’t finish the thought. If this was the last sunset. If there was nothing else that came after this. If the sun refused to turn and the world went dark, fading out like a snuffed candle.

_Would that be okay?_

She holds her legs and blinks. The folded jersey and glyph papers blur. She doesn’t want to cry. Shouldn’t be crying. She should be happy. She has no reason to not be happy.

But still.

Tears.

_Why are you like this?_

Amity rests her head against her legs. “I don’t know,” she whispers to the empty room.

The sound of the door makes Amity’s head snap up.

Luz stands in the doorway, water droplets sitting in her hair. Immediately she’s by Amity’s side. She smells of lemony soap.

“What’s wrong?” She leans close to Amity and strokes her back. It feels good. It doesn’t help Amity feel better.

“I don’t know,” Amity repeats. Her head sinks back to her knees. “Why are you doing this?” she mumbles, unsure if she wants Luz to hear her or not.

“Doing what?” Luz is holding her closely, tightly. She’s warm against her side.

“Being so… nice to me.” Amity takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes you do.” Luz squeezes Amity’s shoulder. It passes reassuring and borders on forceful. “Hey.”

She takes Amity’s head in her hands, guiding her until they’re face to face. Amity blinks but doesn’t look away from Luz’s big brown eyes.

“You _do_ deserve it. You deserve people who care about you.” Luz brushes aside a tear with her thumb. “Everybody does.”

Amity wants to refute her but she doesn’t. She knows that Luz is right while at the same time thinking Luz is wrong. She raises a hand to cover Luz’s, and their fingers entwine against her cheek.

“You can be sad,” Luz tells her, “and you can cry. That’s okay.”

With her free hand, she strokes Amity’s new short hair. Their foreheads rest together.

“But you can’t say you don’t deserve someone caring about you.”

She kisses Amity’s cheek, quashing another tear.

“Because I’m going to do it anyway, and you can’t stop me. Okay?”

Amity makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Okay,” she says, her eyes still wet, a slight smile growing at the edges of her mouth.

“Okay,” Luz repeats.

Amity relaxes into Luz’s embrace, leaning against her shoulder. Luz’s hand keeps touching her hair. It’s warm and soft. It’s safe.

“Can I tell you something?” Luz asks in the quiet room.

“Mm-hm,” Amity murmurs.

“I used to have a cat, when I was younger. He was old when we rescued him from the shelter, but we couldn’t _not_ , you know? There was just something about him.”

Amity closes her eyes. She can feel Luz as she talks, where her ear is pressed against her skin. Listening to Luz speak is comforting. Soothing. Calm.

“He must have been a stray before the shelter picked him up. He was blind in one eye, and had a bit of a limp. I think they might have given him a name, but me and my mom called him El Gato.” She pauses, and then added: “That just means The Cat.”

Amity has nothing to add, so she squeezes Luz’s hand, still resting against her cheek.

“Anyway, he would do this thing where it would be all quiet in the house, nothing happening, nobody doing anything, and he would just _flip out_ and run off to his place to hide. And I didn’t get it. How come he gets scared and freaks out, when he’s somewhere safe?”

“How come?” Amity asks. Her eyes are open again. The sun has set outside, the clouds now colorless streaks across the sky.

“My mom explained that it was _because_ he was somewhere safe. El Gato must have had one hard life, and so he was used to being on guard, ready to react to anything that might be dangerous. So when he let his defences down, sometimes his old instincts would kick in and say _no El Gato, what are you doing, you’re not looking out for danger, there could be an attack coming right now, get out of there!_ And then, the flipping out and hiding.”

“Did he ever get better?” Amity is not sure if she wants the answer.

She feels Luz shrug against her. “A little. He was very old, and pretty set in how he was going to be. I felt sad for him, but also kind of happy, you know? Because he trusted us enough to at least start to feel safe.”

Amity listens for a moment to the quiet room, the little separate world containing just her and Luz. The faint hum from the lamps. The creaking and stretching of wood from the strange living house. Luz’s heartbeat.

“I think I know,” Amity says at last.

-/-

They talk into the night, private conversations that are for nobody else. When the lights go out, Amity feels a sudden sting of loneliness even though Luz is lying right beside her.

“Luz?” she whispers, her voice sounding loud in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“Could you…” She swallows. “...Hold me? Just until I fall asleep.”

Luz’s hand finds hers in the dark. “Sure.” Amity can’t see her smile but she knows she has one, and it is soft and reassuring. “Do you want to be the little spoon?”

_What?_

“The what?” she asks.

“Like if you were to put two spoons together, it’s the little one that goes in front. Like this.”

Amity can hear Luz attempting to demonstrate with her hands. “Luz, I can’t see what you’re doing,” she says, but suspects the gestures wouldn’t be enough of an explanation even if she could.

“Just… turn the other way.”

As she turns over, Amity expects to feel just the weight of Luz’s arm around her. It comes as something of a surprise when Luz scoots under the blanket with her and presses herself against Amity’s back.

“See?” Luz says, curling an arm around her to secure her in place. “Little spoon.”

Amity finds Luz’s hand once again under the blanket. “I suppose that makes you the big spoon.”

“For now.”

The way they are laying together is exactly what Amity was hoping for. Luz’s presence behind her is like a weight keeping her in place. She’s anchored. Tethered. Grounded.

She can picture the two of them fitting together like spoons beneath the covers.

“Thanks, Luz,” she whispers into the night.

She feels Luz squeeze her hand. “Goodnight, little spoon.”

With a smile on her lips, Amity replies, “Goodnight, big spoon.”

As she closes her eyes and waits to find sleep, Amity sees in her mind’s eye the sun sinking beneath the sea, the world going dark, a candle flame puffing out. The world is not going to fade out. She’s not going to disappear into happily ever after like a character at the end of a book. The next day is going to come, and the next, and the next, and the next. Because life isn’t like at the end of a book. Not everything is solved all at once, if at all. It just moves forward one day at a time, shifting, changing, continuing, never stopping.

_It’s better like that._

Amity sleeps a dreamless sleep in Luz’s arms.


End file.
